


Wish Granted

by AdventureAddict



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Ableist Language, Action/Adventure, Alternate Canon, Be Careful What You Wish For, Deviates From Canon, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fantasy, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Humor, LGBTQ Themes, Misogyny, Other, POV First Person, Portals, Rewrite, Self-Insert, Slow Burn, Spoilers, Wish Fulfillment, World Travel, its like 1915 guys bear with them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26833927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdventureAddict/pseuds/AdventureAddict
Summary: Rebecca wasn't the sort of girl made to survive in the chaos that is Ed's life. Unfortunately, she suddenly has everything she ever wanted.After a sudden freak accident, Rebecca has found herself in Ed's world, with no idea how she actually got there or got the scars now covering her body. Even though she had always wanted to be in the Fullmetal Alchemist world, she had always assumed it was an impossibility and had been happy to stay on the sidelines as an excited fan. Now she somehow has to find a way to keep up with her favorite characters. Oh, and maybe get Ed to actually notice she exists. And maybe while she's at it, she can do a few things to "improve" the story, like figuring out a way to keep Hughes alive. And don't forget trying to solve the mystery of how she got there in the first place, and how she's supposed to get home now. It's all a little much for a shy bookworm teenager, honestly.But will Ed even stay her friend after all her secrets come to light?
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric & Original Character(s), Edward Elric/Original Character(s), Winry Rockbell & Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	1. The Seconds Before I Died

I remember I once watched this documentary about death and how when you're dying, time can literally slow down so much that you can live an entire life in the couple seconds before your brain shuts down. And I remember thinking to myself... What if this entire life I was living was just the couple seconds before I hit the pavement in another life? And what if when I died in this life, I lived another life? What if that was the real version of immortality instead of heaven? What if you just lived one life after another after another in the seconds before you died, like Russian nesting dolls?

Time isn't actually as solid as it feels most of the time. And honestly, it doesn't feel very solid most of the time. Forty minutes in a math class at school can feel like an absolute eternity, but then forty minutes hanging out at a friend's house and watching FMA can feel like no time at all. But even that is a more solid perception of time, because hey, at least you know forty minutes has passed. Apparently, when you're dying, you have absolutely no idea how much time is passing. Seconds? Lifetimes? Who knows. 

This was everything I was thinking when I was hit by lightning. 

Well, not even everything, because that's how much time slows down when your body thinks you're dying. I also thought about how stupid of me it had been to ride a metal bike home in a thunderstorm. I wondered about how long it would take someone to find me and tell my parents. I wasn't even a full block away from being home, but since we didn't live on a busy street, maybe I would be laying on the ground for hours before someone knew something had happened. Maybe it would be my parents themselves who found me when I didn't come home on time and they would decide to go look for me. 

In hindsight, I should have just stayed at my friend's house even longer instead of worrying about my parents being mad I came home late. I should have called them and said I didn't want to ride my bike home in the rain and I'd wait at my friend's house until it cleared up. I guess sometimes when we're ding we can see just how silly a decision actually was. I was going to die by lightning just because I was scared my parents were going to be mad I hadn't gotten myself home in the middle of a freaking thunderstorm. Kind of a silly reason to die, really. 

Maybe everything I experienced after that point was just the seconds before I died. But then again, I suppose you could say that about any life in particular. Maybe life is just a glitch from a brain terrified of death. 

The last last thing I remember thinking while still feeling connected to that old life was that I was glad I had managed to actually finish the Fullmetal Alchemist series before I'd died, if I was going to end up dying by lightning bolt anyway. I had only just finished watching the series that day, but at least I wouldn't spend whatever afterlife always wondering what had happened in FMA. At least I wouldn't have to come back as a ghost just to watch anime over someone else's shoulder. At least Ed was clearly in my head after hours of watching him during the sleepover at my friend's house, and at least I could comfort myself by remembering that he would be strong in the face of something like getting hit by lightning. At least I had a better standard to try and live up to rather than just being the terrified little girl I had been my entire life otherwise. 

And then, everything stopped. 

It was such a weird experience, unlike anything I'd known in life. When I say everything stopped, I mean that _everything_ stopped. The world vanished from around me, and with it disappeared everything I was hearing. There was no distant sound of traffic, no sound of rain, no thunder, no whir from the pedals of my bicycle. There wasn't even a static sound or the sound of my own pulse or anything. It's weird, you don't really realize just how much noise the world around you is making until it's suddenly all gone. 

Everything else was gone too. There wasn't the smell of rain or the feel of my wet clothes clinging to my body. I didn't feel out of breath like I normally did when I had been riding my bike. I was just suddenly in the world of... nothing. 

_You're not supposed to be there._

I blinked and turned, surprised by this thought in this world of nothing. But there, in the nothing was... Something. Something that felt sort of mildly human, but not in a solid sense like I felt about myself. It was like trying to focus on something without my glasses while that something kept changing and moving into different shapes. I could get a fuzzy sense of... _Something_ , but not really anything more than that. But I was pretty sure it wasn't because of my glasses, even though I couldn't even feel if I was wearing them or not. 

"Don't you mean I'm not supposed to be here?" I said with a frown. I got the vibe of a shrug from the Something. I couldn't see it shrugging, I could just somehow sense that was what it was feeling. 

_Here, there, somewhere... It's all the same in the end, isn't it?_

I felt like I needed to argue with that, but I had no idea what to even argue. This definitely didn't feel like living had, but... I somehow couldn't even remember what living had felt like. Still, something about the whole experience felt extremely familiar. I just couldn't put my finger on why exactly it felt so familiar. 

"Am I dead?" 

_That depends on what you define as dead._

I glanced around the world of nothing, but honestly, it was almost like I hadn't even turned my head at all. I couldn't even feel the air of my face turning, and there was nothing about the world that changed, no matter what part of it I was looking at. An image flitted across my brain, something old and weirdly familiar, and yet it somehow felt flat compared to other things I could remember. I couldn't place exactly why I could remember this place, but I could remember knowing it before. 

"Are you Truth?" 

I got the sense of smiling from the Something amidst Nothing. Something about the feeling was terrifying, like making eye contact with the monster under your bed and knowing that not only is it not even a little tiny bit scared of you, but it also thinks you'll be a delicious snack. 

_I suppose that could be called one of my names, if you were to say I had one._

I felt like I was wading through mud as I tried desperately to piece together the bits of information I could hardly remember. I couldn't remember why I knew about this Truth thing or why I was there or what it meant or... anything. But it felt like it was a really important thing for me to remember. It felt like I was in some sort of danger, though I couldn't even wrap my head around the concept of danger. I couldn't remember what being afraid really felt like, even though I could swear I'd felt it just a minute ago. 

"Isn't there... a... toll?"

Another sense of smiling, like Truth was in on some joke I wasn't. 

_Tolls don't apply to sitting still. A toll means you're going somewhere. Where are you going?_

"Uh..." I racked my brain, trying to remember where I was supposed to be. Where was my home? What was a home, even? Some place you felt safe, calm. Somewhere things made sense and the people you loved were near. An image flashed through my mind of a white house in the middle of tall green grass that waved in the breeze. Yes, that place. That felt like home. That was where I was supposed to be. Something about the memory was flat in the same way my memory of this place was, but it didn't seem important. Maybe that was just the way memories were here. 

Something about the smile felt like it was widening even more. It seemed that I didn't even have to say what I was thinking or figure out a word for this place I could hardly remember. Truth somehow knew anyway. And the smile kept widening and widening until I felt like I was going to be swallowed. 

_Yes, I know the perfect toll for you._

The calm, white nothingness fell away and became black nothingness instead. It was as if everything rushed back to me all at once, down to the searing fire that went down my arm like the spark on a trail of gunpowder. I screamed in pain, but I couldn't tell where I was or where I would be or who I was or-

* * *

I woke up to crisp white sheets pulled up to my chin. Sound seemed to be working again. There was a bird chirping outside my window and the soft ticking of a clock. The sheets smelled like sunshine and lavender. I didn't even know sheets could smell like sunshine. Sunshine was coming in through the window where the bird was chirping, and there was a glass of water on the nightstand. 

I had never seen the room before in my life, but something about it felt warm and familiar. If only because the room just felt so... homey. And peaceful. 

One thing was clear. I wasn't in a hospital. This was definitely some sort of home, just not any home I could remember. Certainly not my room, or even my grandparents' house. It sure seemed like I was alive, but who knew. Maybe heaven was just very different from how I'd always pictured it. Maybe heaven was everything cozy ever. Maybe God was just going to be a sweet grandma who baked me fresh cookies for the rest of eternity. 

I moved to climb out of the bed and was hit with a wave of pain so intense I was suddenly sure I couldn't be in heaven. I had to be alive, because there's no way I'd feel pain like this in heaven. There was this sharp pain that started at my right shoulder all the way down to my hand, and also cut across my torso and went down my left leg all the way to my foot. There was this concentrated bit of pain in the heel of my foot in particular. My leg also didn't seem to be responding like it normally would and I didn't end up getting out of the bed at all. 

Something about me trying to get out of bed and yelping in pain apparently got someone's attention, as I soon heard some clomping steps on a wooden floor followed by my door being open. I squinted my eyes open and could make out the blurry figure of a blond girl hurrying in and saying something, though I couldn't entirely hear what she was trying to say. Something about it was garbled, maybe because I couldn't fully see her. Right, I wasn't wearing my glasses. I had no idea exactly where my glasses were in the first place since I hadn't seen them on the nightstand. 

The blurry blond girl paused, and it seemed like she had asked me some sort of question, though I had no idea what she'd asked or what I was supposed to answer. I groaned and closed my eyes fully instead of squinting. 

"I wish I could understand you," I mumbled, pressing a hand against my pounding head. 

"I said, did you need something?" the girl said, and suddenly it was like a switch had been flipped and I fully heard every word she said. Okay, so apparently my ears weren't completely broken, they were just taking their sweet time in waking up again. 

"There's some leftover dinner if you're hungry," the girl continued. Her voice was high pitched and sweet sounding. Something about it reminded me of how safe I had been feeling just a couple minutes ago and I relaxed into my pillows with a nod. "Do you like chicken pot pie?" 

"Yeah," I mumbled. "But my leg isn't working." 

"Oh, don't worry, I'll bring it to you," the girl said with a small laugh. "You should rest anyway! Honestly, we're just glad you made it. I don't know what happened to you, but it sure looked nasty." 

I blinked and sat back up slowly, cracking my eyes open again. "What looked so bad?" 

"Well, your clothes were all burned," the girl said. "I assumed there was a fire or something. Though I don't usually see burn marks like the ones you got." 

She gestured towards my right arm, and I looked down. Instead of the usual pale arm I was used to seeing, there was a cracked pattern of red all along my arm right down to the fingertips. I flexed my fingers slightly, as if I couldn't believe that was actually my arm and I had to confirm it actually had a connection to my brain. My fingers moved when I told the to, though, along with another sharp wave of pain. I bit my lip to stop myself from screaming out yet again. I felt like I'd done too much yelling because of pain in the past day. 

"Oh, that reminds me," the girl said and reached into a pocket on the side of her pants. "Your glasses got pretty beat up too, but I managed to fix them up for you. I figured you'd need them."

"Thank you," I said with a breath of relief as she put the glasses in my open left hand. I immediately went to put them back on. I always hated when I wasn't wearing my glasses because it always made me feel so helpless to not be able to see the world around me. I was just about to tell the girl how much of a lifesaver she was, how my parents would have been so mad if my glasses were broken. But before I could manage to say anything, I managed to look up and actually get my first look at the girl in front of me. 

She was wearing an absolutely _perfect_ Winry Rockbell cosplay, down to the wrench sticking out of her pocket and the bits of oil smeared across her neck and arms. In fact, it was such a perfect cosplay I could almost believe she really was Winry. 

"I really like your outfit," I said with a big grin. "That must have been a lot of work." 

She looked down at herself and shrugged. "I didn't really think about it. Sometimes I just get in the zone, and next thing you know, it's the next day and you're covered in oil. Anyway, I'll get you some chicken pot pie. You could probably use some food after what you've been through."

I laughed and settled back in my pillows as she left the room. I hadn't ever really met anyone else who seemed like they were as dedicated of an FMA geek as me. Heck, this girl may even be more into FMA than I was, which had always seemed impossible before, but I couldn't say I'd spent that much time and effort on a cosplay like that. I couldn't say I was really upset about ending up in a house like that. People who were that big of nerds couldn't be all that bad, right? Maybe I could even end up making a friend. 

Something about that suddenly reminded me that I clearly had never made it home in time for the curfew my parents had set. They were probably worried sick about me, and I didn't even know where I was. And the people I was staying with probably hadn't called my family to make sure they wouldn't worry or anything. They could already be calling the police for all I knew. 

Then again, there had been that one time I'd run away from home for an entire day and no one had even noticed I was gone, so there was also the chance that no one had noticed or even cared. Still, my parents deserved a call. They'd eventually end up worrying, one way or another. 

"Someone should call my parents and tell them I'm okay," I said as soon as the girl came back in with a plate that had a slice of chicken pot pie on it. She nodded as she set the plate on my nightstand. 

"Sure, I'd be happy to," she said, pulling a pencil and notepad out of her pocket and handing it over to me. "Here, just write down the number and I'll give them a call." I scribbled the number down for her, adding the area code just in case. I wasn't sure just exactly how far from home I was, but an area code wouldn't hurt. It was kind of scary to realize I didn't even know whether she would need an area code or not. 

"What's your name, anyway?" the girl said. "I kind of need to know if I'm going to tell them you're okay."

"Rebecca Jacobs," I said with a smile as I handed the notepad back to her. 

"Nice to meet you, Rebecca," she said with a smile back at me as she took the notepad. "I'm Winry Rockbell." 

I felt like the world froze as I stared at her. 

* * *

So way back in 2007, I was a sixteen year old, and I decided to write a self insert fanfic. I guess I was inspired by a couple main stories, mostly _Indebted_ by Velf, and _Welcome to My Life, I Think_ , by Agent000. Indebted I mostly just loved because Velf had admitted in the opening that she wanted to take common tropes and twist them, and Agent000... Well, I ended up marrying them, so I guess I had just loved seeing more into their life, and that inspired me to do a story with me as a self insert, but twisting some common tropes. Mainly, I set out with the goal of "Can I take a character that would normally be considered a Mary Sue and make people like her and make her story believable anyway?" I had to face some things about myself I didn't really like in order to make my character actually have flaws and be real. It was one of the hardest stories I ever wrote, but I also loved it in a way I couldn't entirely explain. Which I guess is why in the time of crisis that is 2020, thirteen whole years later, I decided to come back to this and try to rewrite it. 

A lot has changed in thirteen years, but I'm going to try and stay true to the original time I had written it. I'm going to try and write the original plot I was working on at the time (and never finished), so if you've read the original and know the twist that's coming, dont' spoil it for the people who haven't read that. And, um, if you haven't read the original, hem. Please don't. It's... one of the very first stories I ever wrote. Reading it now makes me cringe so much. This one is miles better, believe me. 

Also in keeping with the times this was written, the technology is from 2007, the memes are from 2007... If you are a modern teen, please forgive me and my old fuddy-duddy-ness. This is the only teenagerhood I really got to know backwards and forwards. Also I was... A lot less open-minded when I was a teenager. I'm compromising on that point ever so slightly and making this Rebecca kind of a blend between how I honestly acted back then and how I am now, but there might be a few times where Rebecca seems a bit insensitive, when I apologize in advance for. I promise she'll have as good of a character arc as I've had in real life. 

When I originally wrote this, I based the starting point off an actual day I had experienced. I really had just come home from a sleepover at my friend's when we were watching FMA. I really had started biking home when it started pouring on me. And then I had lightning suddenly hit the ground in front of me, maybe just a few feet away. I biked home with shaky legs, wondering the whole time what would have happened if I had actually gotten hit by that lightning bolt. When I got home, I dumped out my bag and wrote down everything I had in it so that I could use that information later, because I knew a story was brewing. So the things Rebecca had with her were the things I had actually been carrying on that day. 

Oh, and another thing about 2007... Brotherhood did not exist. I had no idea it was going to exist in a couple years. The manga wasn't finished. I had only seen the 2003 anime in terms of knowing what ending might happen to the brothers. Knowing the manga and Brotherhood now, I'm going to work those into the plot, of course, but Rebecca will have no idea what's happening. Forgive her. (Though we may also keep a few elements from the 2003 storyline because ackkk, I miss Russell and Fletcher. But I'll try to make it so even those who have only seen Brotherhood will be able to keep up, because I know Brotherhood is the more popular telling these days.)

But the main thing that's changed between then and now is... I came out as a trans man. I didn't know it back when I was writing this, but Rebecca was probably struggling with womanhood in a lot of the same ways I was at the time. I even wrote a period into the original, because no one ever wrote about periods in these portal world-jumping stories I read, and darn it, I wanted to know how people would deal with something that was clearly such a big deal, something that could make the main protagonist's entire world fall apart for a week or two. Little did I know that cis women who experience periods don't usually experience it that intensely.

So I'll be writing Rebecca from that perspective, knowing now that I was trans even back then, but not wanting to face the truth of that yet. I'm not entirely sure if Ill even end up addressing that in this story or not. Maybe? To be honest, I don't know if I would have ever dug deep into my feelings about my gender if I'd been in a different time where people didn't talk about this stuff, able to be around Ed, let alone having a cis man I'd fallen for also in love with me. 

Which brings me to the last sticking point about the original. Back in chapter one of the original, I promised, don't worry, I don't have a big head, I won't make Ed fall in love with me or anything. *distant bitter laughter from author* Readers, that ended up being a big, fat, juicy lie. Okay, well, maybe not a lie. I believed it when I wrote it. But then I went on to write so. much. romance between Ed and Rebecca. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. I think the post Brotherhood wave especially hated it because Ed was supposed to wind up with Winry, darn it all. I could write it out of the rewrite, but I'm keeping it in, and let me explain why.

In this time of my life where I was trans but didn't know it, I fell for FMA as hard as I did because Ed came to represent my own inner repressed masculinity. Small, angry, and trying desperately to change things that the world told him he couldn't change. I originally wrote that I wouldn't have Ed fall for Rebecca because underneath everything, I couldn't really see why the masculine part of my identity would ever, ever love and accept the feminine part of my identity. Deep down, I thought my masculine self would hate my feminine self, and I thought the relationship between Ed and Rebecca would be exactly like that. Except then I started writing, and I just... couldn't make Ed hate Rebecca. And then next thing I knew I was switching to his POV and expressing some of the things I could never express in my daily life, like how much I was attracted to girls, or how sorry I felt for this feminine side of myself who had been through so much, or how much I honestly loved her underneath all my excuses and shouting. 

So I'm keeping the romance between Ed and Rebecca in there. Because it was an act of revolution for teenage me, and that's probably part of why I keep coming back to this story. This was the story that taught me to love and accept all of myself, and that's impacted me ever since. This is the story that was one of the first stepping stones in me realizing I was trans, and I guess I kind of want to honor that. I've always felt awful about abandoning the original and never quite figuring out what happened to them, but I guess that partly because when it came to the story of my feminine and masculine side learning to love each other, I guess I didn't really know how it would end. I was just taking shots in the dark at what might be. 

But I've seen what happens. I know how this story ends now. And I'd like to finally Give Ed and Rebecca the peace they deserve after they gave me my peace. 

Anyway, thanks for coming by and reading through this. Especially if you're one of those people who read the original WG and then put up with me abandoning the darn thing because I had no idea where I was going. I promise that won't happen this time, I swear!


	2. The Number You're Trying to Reach Is Not in Service

"Nice to meet you, Rebecca," she said with a smile back at me as she took the notepad. "I'm Winry Rockbell."

I felt like the world froze as I stared at her.

"But, like... What's your real name?" I said, staring at her. Sure, it made sense that everyone would call her Winry if she had a cosplay like that and if she clearly liked FMA that much, but there was no way that was her real name. I'd never met anyone named Winry. I wasn't even sure it was a real name.

"What do you mean?" the girl said with a frown, her fingers tightening around the notepad. "That _is_ my real name." 

"Look," I sighed. "I don't care about you going by Winry. I think it's awesome. I really love FMA too, so I'm not like... making fun of you being really obsessed or anything. I'm fine with calling you Winry, but, I mean, there's no way that's your legal name."

She had a frown deepen on her face as she slowly turned a dark shade of red. I couldn't really tell whether it was from anger or embarrassment. "I don't see how my legal name is any of your business!" she snapped at me before storming out of the room. The door slammed behind her, making the wall and door frame slightly shake from the impact. I raised my eyebrows, even though it wasn't like Winry would see my reaction. Geez. I didn't see reason to get _that_ angry over asking what her actual name was. 

I at least had my chicken pot pie to occupy myself with, though there wasn't much else I could do, considering that my leg still wasn't cooperating and moving when I told it to move. I was kind of stuck in bed, but I didn't particularly feel like going back to sleep. I just hoped that Winry had called my parents even if she was mad at me about the whole name thing. My parents didn't deserve to not know what was going on just because I'd made a fangirl angry. 

After I'd finished my food, I mostly sat around trying desperately to get my leg to listen to me. It was so frustrating to sit there and send commands of "move!" repeatedly to my leg only to have nothing happen. At one point I got so frustrated I tried reaching down and just moving my leg manually, but I immediately regretted that decision. It felt like my entire leg had suddenly caught fire. 

I found that the new scar covering my arm wasn't confined to only my arm. The same bright red marks ran diagonally across my torso, running down my left leg and all the way to my toes. It was like red roots had been tattooed across my body. Sometimes the lines actually got pretty small and delicate and it was almost pretty in its own way. But it was also a scar, and I couldn't help but feel almost like I'd been... ruined in some way. I knew that wasn't fair and I was supposed to love myself no matter what, but I'd also seen my mom stress about scars before and seen men claim that any kind of scarring on a woman made her ugly. Heck, I'd even seen my own best friend worry at one point because one of her cheeks happened to have a permanent red blush to it. If there was reason to be concerned about _that_ , then people would definitely think this scar was ugly too. And there was no way for me to fully hide it, not unless I committed to always wearing long sleeves, pants, and gloves no matter what the weather. Which sounded miserable, honestly. 

Then it struck me as kind of amusing which arm and leg I had happened to get scarred on. It was the same as the limbs Ed had automail for. And, well, it wasn't automail, but that was good, right? I would still be able to feel things and I wouldn't have to have that awful automail surgery. And if Ed could go through those things, then surely I could stand a little scarring. Part of me liked having my own secret connection to Ed. 

What baffled me about the whole thing was that I couldn't really figure out why I was scarred in the first place. Winry had said my clothes were burned, but I couldn't remember being in any sort of fire. Had I lost some memory or something? I tried thinking back to what I could last remember. I had been visiting Sabrina so we could watch the last bit of FMA together. I was scared about getting home late, so I had ridden my bike home in the rain. Rain, definitely not fire. here had been thunder and lightning, because I could remember being scared by it. And then there had been some sort of bright light, pain, and then nothingness, and then...

I froze as I remembered the nothingness and the Something in the nothingness that had said it could be called Truth. But... that hadn't actually been real, had it? That was just me having some sort of weird dream because I had been in pain from whatever had happened. I had been thinking about FMA because that was what I was always thinking about, and that had just translated into some kind of weird pain dream while I had been unconscious.

....Right?

But I could remember picturing the Rockbell house while I had been in that nothingness, and Truth had somehow known I had wanted to go there. And then I had woken up in this house with this Winry cosplayer taking care of me. That had to all just be... weird coincidence. Somehow. Because there was no way I could actually be in the FMA world. That wasn't even possible. 

But also... Where _was_ I? 

I couldn't recognize this Winry girl from school at all. I mean, I was such a huge FMA fan and it felt like basically the entire school knew it. If there had been someone else that into FMA that she was going by one of the character's names... I felt like she and I would have met each other at some point. Or at least freaked out on Halloween when we both inevitably would have worn cosplay to school. So was I in some neighboring town and she went to a different high school? Or was I...?

No. That was ridiculous. I wasn't just a character in one of my fanfics. 

But something in the back of my brain kept tugging at me, all the same. I'd never really had daydreams that had felt like that weird Gate hallucination before. But how would I even find out a question as weird as "Am I in the FMA world?" And how would I do that when I couldn't even climb out of my own bed, anyway?

I was interrupted out of my thoughts by a soft knock at the door, I called out that the person could come in, and then Winry was poking her head in around the door. 

"Oh, Winry!" I said with a sigh of relief. At least I didn't have to try and figure out how to crawl out of the room and to wherever she was. "Look, I'm sorry about what I said before. I think... I mean, I don't know. I may have hit my head or something, and I think I'm just confused and..." 

"Don't worry about it, Rebecca," she said with a soft smile. "I... May have overreacted a bit anyway. I just used to get teased for my full name, so I... Well, it doesn't really matter. I just wanted to ask you about this phone number you gave me. I just couldn't figure out what you were getting at." 

I frowned and took the paper back from her, looking at my handwriting. Had I written it wrong or something? No, it looked fine. 

"Um," I frowned at the paper. "Can you not read my handwriting or something?" 

"No, no, it's fine!" Winry said with a wave of her hands. "It's just... there's too many numbers." 

I frowned and twisted my head. "I mean, I put down the area code, is that it?" 

"The... what?" 

I pointed at the first three numbers as Winry leaned over my shoulder and frowned at the piece of paper. It didn't seem like a phone number would be so complicated, but even that didn't seem to make Winry understand what I was getting at. 

"Um... maybe I'll just let you call them yourself," Winry said after a minute with a nervous laugh. I sighed and made a face at my leg. 

"I mean, that'd be great if it wasn't for the fact that I can't seem to walk." 

"Oh." Winry blinked and looked at my leg, then back to my face again. "Do you normally use a wheelchair?" 

"What?" I frowned and shook my head. "No, normally I can walk just fine, just whatever happened to me seems to have messed up my leg. It's not moving very much and it really, really hurts."

Winry was pulling aside blankets and leaning over my leg before I had even fully finished the sentence. Every poke she did to my leg was extremely gentle and yet sent a new wave of pain. Eventually she lifted my leg and bent it at the knee, making me yelp and reach for my leg like I was going to pull it away from her. 

"Well, your leg should be fine," she said, not at all seeming bothered by the amount of pain it had caused me. "Everything is working and you clearly still have feeling, which is a great sign. You might just have to relearn how to walk a little bit. That sometimes happens when the body goes through something traumatic. And in the meantime, we have plenty of spare crutches you can use." She gave me a look over like she was mentally measuring me and she nodded. 

"Really, it's kind of lucky you showed up on the doorstep of an automail shop. We've got everything a person could need for relearning how to walk," she said before turning and leaving the room, her ponytail swinging. She was gone before I could say anything. Had she honestly just said automail seriously, or had I imagined that? Or maybe she was just such a Winry fangirl that she liked playing the part, and when better to play the part than with someone who couldn't walk? That had to be it. Because there was no way I could be in a world where automail actually existed. That was impossible. 

Winry ended up coming back with some crutches and some painkiller cream that she spread over my leg and made it blissfully go numb. Having my leg not scream at me any time I moved it an inch made it so I could actually use the crutches, even though my leg still seemed to be struggling with listening to my brain's commands. 

"I don't usually have to use this much ointment," Winry said with a frown as she closed the tin. "I should probably go into town with Granny tomorrow and get some more. Don't want to run out."

I nodded my head firmly in agreement. That stuff was freaking magic. I definitely didn't want her running out either. I wanted my leg to just stay numb until it stopped being in pain at all. At least with crutches and pain ointment, I could suddenly move around the entire house, even if it was somewhat awkward on my part. I had never even broken a bone in my life before, so I'd never had reason to learn how to use crutches. Winry used the chance to bring me to the other room to use the phone.

The phone belonged in a museum. It was this big black box with the receiver held by one of those wire cradles I had never seen phones really use. Heck, I was used to using a cordless phone at home that could be carried around the house as long as it had been charging beforehand. And then I noticed something even weirder about the telephone. 

"Uh... where are the numbers?" I said, twisting and looking at the phone from all angles. "How am I supposed to call anyone?" 

Winry frowned at me like I was talking crazy. "You just pick up the phone and tell the operator the number you want to call...? I mean, if they don't answer the first time, you jiggle the cradle, but that's it, really." 

"Um..." I blinked at the phone. I had never called an operator before in my life, though I knew it was theoretically something that could be done. "You know... maybe I'll just call my parents tomorrow." Sure, they'd be mad. I'd probably be in for a furious lecture, but if I had to talk to a stranger over the telephone just to talk to them, then I was willing to put up with a horrible lecture if it meant putting off the phone problem for another day. 

"Oh, I get it," Winry said with a laugh. "I guess you just didn't know how to write down a phone number because you don't use them very often! Don't worry about it, they're actually really easy to use once you get used to them." 

"Um..." I glanced at Winry and then back at the phone. "It's not that, it's just... I'm really nervous about talking to new people sometimes. I just need to... psych myself up for it, you know?" 

Winry raised an eyebrow in a way that suggested that she very much did not know, but she smiled and nodded all the same. I was used to that sort of reaction. At least she was nice and not the sort of person who would mock me for being shy. My parents wouldn't be so okay with the fact that my being shy had kept them worrying for an extra day.

Even the little amount of walking around on crutches I'd done had managed to exhaust me, even though as far as I knew, I'd already been sleeping all day. Winry didn't seem at all worried when I said I was tired again though, she just said something about that being expected and that I needed to rest and led me back to bed. 

* * *

I woke up at some point in the middle of the night desperately needing to use a bathroom, so I grabbed the crutches and did my best to hobble out of the room and look for it in the dark. No one was really awake, and I didn't want to accidentally stumble into someone's bedroom while they were sleeping, so eventually I just gave up and hobbled back to bed. Winry could tell me in the morning. 

In the early morning I woke up to the small sound of a clink on my nightstand and opened my eyes to see Winry setting a sandwich and a piece of paper there. 

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," she said in a whisper. "I just figured you'd want some food when you woke up. I'm going into town with granny."

"Mmkay," I mumbled, blinking at her. 

"I tried asking the operator about your phone number, but she didn't have any idea how it worked either. She said she was going to look into it and let me know. So there might be a phone call later if she figures out how to call your family." 

"Mm," I mumbled, closing my eyes and settling back into the pillow. Something about the phone or another. The phone might ring with something important or something. 

"Is there anything else you need before I go?" Winry said. I almost told her no before I remembered my search in the middle of the night.

"Where's the bathroom?" I said, cracking my eyes open again. 

"Oh!" Winry laughed. "It's just out back. You can see it from the kitchen window." 

By the kitchen. Okay. I hadn't gone all the way to the kitchen the other night. That must have been why I didn't find it. I nodded and closed my eyes again, settling back into my pillow. I could just barely hear the door close before I had fallen asleep again. 

When I woke up again it was still technically morning, as in, I managed to wake up before noon. The soft early light from that morning had gotten much stronger, and the lettuce in my sandwich had gotten kind of wilty. I made a face at it. I didn't like lettuce anyway, so it wasn't that big of a loss to me. I pulled the sandwich apart for dissection. 

The bread was a lot thicker and darker than I was used to, so I figured it had to be some sort of whole wheat. Gross, but I'd put up with it. The lettuce and tomato on the salad got immediately pulled off and put to the side. Underneath those was some sort of weird crumbly cheese I could recognize, maybe goat cheese or something, and underneath that was some thick slices of chicken that definitely weren't from a deli. I wanted nothing to do with the cheese, which meant I was stuck with weird chicken on weird bread. I made a face at the sandwich and decided maybe I wasn't actually that hungry after all. 

I found myself grateful that I'd woken up for Winry to talk to me, because apparently her handwriting was terrible. I couldn't read a single word of the note she had left me. At least I knew there was the chance of an important phone call and that Winry was at the store. And something about the bathroom being near a window or something. I couldn't remember exactly what Winry had said. At least I didn't have to worry about people yelling at me for barging in their room if no one was home. Or at least, I assumed there wasn't anyone else in the house, if Winry was thinking she had to leave me notes and tell me about phone calls and such. 

The first room I looked in definitely wasn't a bathroom, but another room pretty similar to mine. Sweet, clean, but kind of bare and lacking any sort of personal touches. The second room I looked in was the same as well. Were these guest rooms of some sort? Who needed this many guest rooms, anyway? 

The third room I opened was some sort of office or something, with tools and metal parts spread all over a desk. What made me pause, though, was the mechanical foot resting in the center of the desk. It looked just like automail. Was Winry working on some other cosplay? I crept into the room to get a closer look at the foot, staring at it in awe and forgetting that I didn't really want to snoop. I had no idea whether it was just a prop or if it was something that was supposed to be worn. If it was supposed to be worn, I had no idea how, because the thing looked completely and solidly metal all the way through. Still, there was something beautiful about it. I think I understood why Winry loved the character Winry so much. She clearly loved automail and understood it better than pretty much any other fan I'd seen before. 

I had picked up the foot and was looking at all the crevices when the weird old phone on the desk suddenly rang, making me jump. I dropped the foot to the desk in my surprise, and it landed with a loud clunk. I immediately worried that maybe I had damaged it and Winry would know I had been snooping and touching her stuff and I should check-

I was just reaching to pick the foot back up when the phone rang again. Right, I had to deal with the phone first. Besides, that foot was so heavy and metal, it was probably fine. I bit my lip and picked up the phone. It could be information on how to call my parents. Or at least, that seemed like what Winry had said that morning. 

"Hello?" 

The voice that came through the phone was male. Kind of young sounding, though I couldn't quite put my finger on why exactly. Maybe it was the way he was stammering. But everything he was saying sounded like... nonsense. I had no idea what he was saying. Was it some sort of other language?

"Um... Sorry, I only speak English," I said with a frown towards the phone. There was a pause, and I thought for sure it was just the guy thinking on how to switch to English. But when he started talking again, it was more of that nonsense. I didn't even know what language he was speaking. It certainly didn't sound like the Spanish I sometimes I heard my friends practicing for their classes. I'd made the mistake of taking German. Except there was never a random emergency with someone needing German translated. 

"Look, I have no idea what you're saying," I said with a sigh. The guy on the phone sighed too. I began wondering if maybe it was just a problem with the phone. After all, the thing looked like it was maybe a million years old. Maybe the words were just getting garbled on the way through its really old hardware or something. 

The guy said something else in nonsense, but it was slowed down, like he was enunciating on purpose for me as if he thought I was stupid or something. I huffed at the phone. 

"Look, I'm not stupid, I just don't speak whatever it is you're speaking!" I snapped at him. "Slowing down isn't going to help anything because I only speak _English_!"

The guy said something that sounded almost more like he was thinking out loud to himself than trying to actually communicate. And then the line clicked and there was suddenly no sound. He'd hung up on me. I huffed and hung up the phone on my end as well. Good riddance. That guy just wasn't understanding me at all. 

With the phone no longer a problem, I turned back to the automail foot to see if I had damaged it. Thankfully, it was almost entirely metal and it didn't even have a scuff mark to show for the whole thing. I had no idea if I need to worry about anything more than surface damage, but it was probably just a prop anyway. I was just carefully setting the foot back on the desk when the phone rang again. I felt a pit slide down in my stomach. 

The phone was silent when I picked it up, like neither of us really wanted to say the first word. Eventually I squeezed my eyes shut and croaked, "Hello?"

Another long moment of silence, and then more gibberish. It was the same guy as before. Maybe he thought he'd called the wrong number or something and that if he called again he would somehow get through to whoever spoke the same language as him. How was I supposed to even communicate with someone who didn't even seem to understand me saying I only spoke English?

"Winry... is... shopping," I said, stumbling for words. I didn't want this guy to just keep calling back again and again in the hopes of getting the right number. "Call _later_." 

There was another pause, and then the guy said something else I couldn't understand, but he seemed like he was asking me a question of some sort. 

" _Later,_ " I emphasized. I had no idea exactly what he was asking, but I could only hope he'd somewhat understood me and was asking for clarification. If only he could at least see me, then we could at least do charades to communicate. But he must have understood something, because after one more sentence of whatever he was speaking, the phone clicked again and he was gone. I just hoped he would actually try calling again later, because I had no idea how Winry could call him back or who had even called in the first place. I shrugged and hung up the phone again, deciding to get back to my bathroom quest. 

"I wish I just knew where the dang bathroom was," I muttered to myself as I was going through the hall at a painstakingly slow pace. This method of randomly looking in rooms hadn't worked out too well for me so far. 

When I finally managed to limp my way to the kitchen on crutches, I could see out the kitchen window I could barely remember Winry mentioning, and my memory or her explaining the bathroom suddenly clicked into place. She hadn't said it was near the kitchen, she said you could see it from the kitchen. And from the kitchen's window I could see a rickety wooden shed. Previously, I'd just dismissed it at one of those storage sheds that everyone had in their backyard, but this time, something clicked when I looked at it. It wasn't a shed, it was an outhouse. 

"Oh, _heck_ no," I muttered with a grimace. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I'm actually already back with another chapter? Amazing. No, seriously, I didn't want to leave you all hanging too long, so I figured I'd just post another chapter as soon as I had it properly edited and such. And yes, I have more written than what I've released. Amazingly, I've matured since I was a teenage writer, so nowadays I usually write a few chapters of a story before I post it, just to be sure I'll actually continue it and not just abandon it. So yes, there are definitely more chapters coming, considering they're already written and all I have to do is edit them. 
> 
> I actually had to do some freaking research for this chapter to figure out if phone numbers used to work differently. And of course, they did, lol. So then I fell down that rabbit hole of niche telephone history. Which was oddly fascinating. Writer life, haha. So yeah, fun tidbit of the day for you there. Phone numbers used to have letters in them. Apparently, it was to indicate the area, so a lot of numbers had two letters and then five numbers. And even more fun information, apparently people used to not even dial the numbers themselves because switchboard operators?
> 
> -shudders- Just thinking about all that made me grateful for text messages existing.


	3. The Boy on the Other End of the Phone

For the record, there is nothing romantic about using an outhouse. Nothing. And I'd never had to use anything worse than a port-a-potty before. My mom had always hated camping, so I'd never had the typical camping experience. And any other time I was confronted with the possibility of a hole in the ground or an outhouse or what have you, it was always in a situation where I knew I'd be able to get a proper toilet if I just waited. I'd only ended up using port-a-potties because I had been working at a summer festival at one point, and when you're stuck somewhere for the entire day... Eventually you have to make some sort of sacrifice.

At least the outhouse was tidy compared to the port-a-potty, rather than having toilet paper everywhere and a smell of chemicals so strong it could cause a headache. I wouldn't say the smell of the outhouse was better though just because it was different. I still hated it and vowed to try and use the toilet as little as humanly possible. Who even had a freaking outhouse, anyway? Even when I'd stayed in a freaking castle for a week there had at least been toilets. Who would be willing to live in a house that long and not take the time to install a proper bathroom?

But after that, I wasn't entirely sure what to do with myself. I couldn't make heads or tails of the kitchen. Much like the phone, the appliances were pretty freaking old. Like, old enough that I hadn't even realized things this old could still work. And that plus the outhouse was just... weird. Were these people just committed to living like they were in a living museum or something?

Another thought flitted across my mind. Weren't all these appliances from about the same time as when FMA took place? And judging by the house, it was almost seeming like I had randomly shown up in one of those historical reenactment villages. Not unheard of where I'd grown up, but the closest one I knew of was still a couple of towns over. And it was for colonial times, not for a time with phones but no proper fridge. When did FMA take place again? Sometime around the 1910s? Was this stuff right for the 1910s? I mentally smacked myself for not paying more attention in history class. Then again, history didn't teach actually useful information like what to look for to know if you've time-traveled or just shown up in a historical reenactment center.

Though historical reenactment centers always had something to give away the fact that they were in the modern time. There was always some hidden parking lot, or plaques around the buildings, or even just modern candy wrappers dropped by the tourists or something. I knew that if I could just get out of the house and look around, I would know for sure.

But Winry had also said that there was the possibility of that random phone call, and I didn't want to miss anything that would actually be useful and important. It sure didn't seem like they were the type to have an answering machine or something set up.

I wasn't sure what else to do with myself if I wasn't going to try and explore the town, though. The house didn't have any sort of television, and definitely not a computer. I had originally packed a couple of books in my bag like I always did whenever I went someplace, but I had no idea where Winry would have put my bag anyway. Heck, I wasn't even sure what had happened with my bike. I hadn't thought to ask about it, considering I'd had a few bigger things on my mind.

So I eventually ended up going back to my room, where I found that there was a set of clothes laid out on a chair across from the bed that I hadn't noticed before. I'd been dressed in some sort of nightgown all this time that definitely wasn't mine. Hadn't Winry said something about my clothes having been burned or something? I couldn't remember anything that would make clothes burn, so who knows what had happened while I'd been unconscious. Whatever had happened, it had managed to even get my bra. I had been embarrassed to wander around the house without a bra, but apparently, the person who had dressed me in the nightgown hadn't thought a bra was important.

Sure enough, there was a bra in the pile of clothes Winry had set out for me. It wasn't really the sort of bra I'd normally go for. It didn't have much structure to it, and yet there was an awful lot of fabric. It didn't look like something a teenager would wear, more like something a grandma would wear. Still, it wasn't like I could do much else. I could go back to wearing the bras I liked when I got home.

When I pulled off the nightgown to put on the new clothes, I noticed that there were actually a couple of angry red lines right underneath my boobs, about like what I would get if my underwire had been chafing at me all day. Except I hadn't been wearing a bra for the past couple of days, and these marks were still tender to the touch. Maybe if my clothes had burned like Winry had said, then maybe the wire in my bra had burned me? Was that sort of thing possible?

I shrugged and put the new bra on. At least it being shaped differently than my usual bras meant that it wouldn't be rubbing right against my new underboob burns.

The other clothes, meanwhile, we not really my style at all. I was beginning to wonder if Winry even knew what teenagers liked. I mean, she'd left me slacks like I was going to an interview or something. Then again, maybe someone who lived or worked or... whatever at a historical reenactment center would not be up to date on the trends. But... She had such a good FMA cosplay, so she couldn't be _that_ detached from what other teenagers liked, could she?

 _Unless it's not a cosplay_ , a voice in my head whispered. I closed my eyes and shook my head. That was impossible.

Anyway, the clothes she had given me seemed like the sort of thing my mom would get for me at Kohl's. The pants were these tan slacks that seemed like exactly the sort of thing my mom would wear. The shirt was a polo shirt with white and baby pink stripes. It was so not the sort of thing I would wear. For one, I never really wore polo shirts. I didn't really like the way the collar looked or felt. And for two... I hated wearing pink.

Well, okay, I didn't actually _hate_ hate it. I kind of honestly liked how I looked in pink. It complimented my dark hair really well and it seemed to make my figure look just a bit more balanced. But I hated how any time I wore pink, people felt the need to comment on it, like I needed to be girly more often. I was plenty girly even when I wasn't wearing pink, and I was still plenty tomboyish when I wore pink. But everyone saw pink as me embracing my girly side, and eventually, I'd learned to dread wearing anything pink.

But still, I didn't want to keep wearing the nightgown, and it wasn't like I had other shirts to pick from. And it wasn't like kids from school would see me wearing it or something, so it would be no big deal.

And in all honesty, the shirt looked pretty nice on me. Sometimes I forgot I actually had decent curves because the clothes my mom preferred to get for me were often on the looser side, and my dad always freaked out if I wore anything that even showed the slightest hint of how I was "becoming a young woman." Other girls my age were wearing crop tops, something I couldn't even bear to bring myself to do, and meanwhile, my parents freaked any time they remembered I had boobs. I wondered how they would freak out when I showed up at home again with some strange girl's clothes that happened to fit in a way they usually didn't encourage.

After that, I wasn't entirely sure what to do with myself. I looked all over the room to see if my bag had survived, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I desperately hoped that it was just that Winry had put it somewhere rather than it possibly being lost. Or even worse, destroyed. If my clothes had been burned, then wasn't there a chance my bag had burned too? But inside that bag had been my copy of the first FMA manga. It wasn't like it was that hard to replace if I couldn't find it, but it had been the first FMA thing I'd ever gotten and I had taken that book with me everywhere. That copy in particular was sentimental to me, and I hated to think of losing it forever.

And besides, I tended to reread the manga whenever I got stressed out. I was aching for something familiar, something comforting that would make me feel like somehow this would all work out okay.

After a while of looking desperately for my book with no success, I decided to look around the rest of the house for books. I needed _something_ to do, after all. Except that all the books in the house were not only big heavy books that looked like they were nonfiction, but they also seemed to be in some other language I couldn't recognize at all. Russian? I wondered if Winry and her grandmother were from some other country and that was the language the guy who'd called earlier had been speaking.

When I cracked one of the foreign books open out of curiosity, I was greeted by weird medical diagrams scattered through the foreign text. Apparently Winry's house just had all kinds of medical textbooks in another language, which was so oddly specific. I tried to occupy myself by flipping through some of the books and looking at the pictures, but the book probably wouldn't have held my interest even if I knew what it was saying.

Eventually I settled on just finding some spare paper and a pencil and settled down to just work on writing instead. If I couldn't find a book I wanted to read, then I would just write my own story instead. I had been getting close to actually finishing off the fanfiction I had been working on, and I was kind of feeling desperate to actually reach the end and see how the readers would react. That had been part of why I had pushed for the sleepover in order to finish watching FMA all the way through. I'd been scared to work too much FMA plot into my story before I'd seen everything and had as much information as everyone else, but now that I actually knew the entire story, I wasn't as likely to put my foot in my mouth. Of course, that could all change as the manga came out, but I couldn't do anything about that aspect.

I managed to get wrapped up enough in my writing that I was taken by surprise when I heard the front door opening. I could hear Winry's voice, followed by an older woman saying things I couldn't understand, and then a couple barks from a dog. I hadn't even realized there was a dog. Their family really was just like the Rockbells. No wonder Winry was so into Winry.

"We're back!" Winry called out. I was already standing and moving toward the front door so I could tell her about the weird phone call I hadn't understood.

"There was-" I started, but froze in mid-sentence when I saw everyone standing in the doorway.

Winry was the same Winry I'd come to expect after a couple of interactions, though she was wearing a different outfit than the one I'd seen her in the day before. Her grandma was pretty much exactly what one would expect of Pinako if Pinako were a real person. She was short with a grey bun and glasses perched on her nose. But she was still pretty normal for a grandma,or at least normal enough that I could have brushed her off if it weren't for the dog jumping around hers and Winry's feet.

The dog not only looked exactly like Den, but also happened to have an automail leg. Winry and her grandma had just been going out to run errands, even the most obsessive fan wouldn't go through the effort of making their dog and grandma cosplay just to run errands.

"There was what?" Winry said, looking up from the dog. I blinked, trying to remember what I had been saying before.

"There was... a... a, um..." I frowned and shook my head. "There was a phone call, but I couldn't understand the guy."

Winry's grandmother said something then, something that had the same sort of rolling sounds and throatiness that I'd heard when the guy had called earlier, as if she knew I had been talking about that weird language that I assumed was the same language the medical textbooks were written in.

"What are you talking about, Granny," Winry said with a laugh. "You must have wax in your ears. I understood everything."

"Everything of what?" I said, and Winry turned to me.

"Everything you said," she said, her eyebrows scrunching slightly. "What, did you not understand Granny?"

"No, of course not," I said with a snort. "She's talking that same language that guy on the phone was using."

Her grandma added something else in whatever language it was she was speaking in.

"I don't know what either of you is talking about!" Winry said, and waved her arms at both of us with a shush. "You're both speaking Amestrian, just like me!"

I felt my heart freeze. Amestrian? As in... Amestris? it couldn't be. It just couldn't be. But... how did Winry understand what I was saying? It didn't make sense that she would think I was speaking the same language as her and yet I couldn't understand her grandma and her grandma couldn't understand me. Even if I had somehow, impossibly, actually landed in the FMA world, it didn't make sense. Okay, maybe it made sense that there would be a whole different language different from English or Japanese, but why would I show up with only one person able to understand me? Or was it only one person who didn't understand me? No, there was that guy on the phone. I wanted to die of embarrassment at the thought that he had probably been speaking the most common language. So I had traveled all the way to another world just to have... only Winry understand me? But why would that even happen?

Unless... I frowned and licked my lips. Unless it was some sort of elaborate prank. After all, it wasn't like I was super popular at school, and it wasn't like I hid how obsessed I was with FMA. I'd been teased for how much I liked it before, so what if this was just another cruel prank?

"If this is a prank, it's really not nice," I said. I could feel my lower lip shaking slightly and a lump was forming in my throat. I wanted to slap myself. Now was exactly the wrong time to cry, no matter how much it hurt to think of people trying that hard just to make fun of me. Crying would give the bullies exactly what they wanted. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, I had to not cry no matter what.

"What? No!" Winry turned towards me and reached out to touch my shoulder. "This isn't any kind of prank, Rebecca. There's just some sort of miscommunication going on, but we'll figure it out. I promise."

It felt like she was just being extra nice because she could tell I was close to crying, but at the same time, it didn't feel like she was being _fake_ nice. It felt like genuine niceness, I just had no idea what to make of what was going on. Because there was no way I could actually be in the FMA world. I'd been aching and hurting for that impossible dream for too long and been telling myself it was impossible. There was no way I wanted to believe something like that could be possible if it just meant I was going to have my heart broken by reality again.

"You're not just making fun of the stupid obsessed girl?" I said, and my words slightly caught. I had to squeeze my lips together as hard as I possibly could just to stop the sobs from coming. "You're not, like, going to take a video of me being all excited about being in a fantasy world and then tell me none of it is a real and I'm an idiot for believing it even though you manipulated me to believe that?"

Winry frowned, but I could tell it was from confusion, not because she was upset I had caught on or something. She seemed genuinely confused, not like she was just putting on an act to recover the epic prank. But if she wasn't pulling an awful prank, then what was the explanation for all of this, anyway?

"What are you ta-" Winry started, but was interrupted by the sound of the phone ringing. "Hang on," she said, and trotted off in the direction of the phone. The dog followed behind her with a wagging tail, and since I didn't want to be left alone with the grandmother I couldn't understand, I followed. I mostly wanted to run back to my room to hide and pretend the entire world didn't exist, but I knew that would just end with someone coming in to ask me all kinds of questions.

I could hear the phone cut off in mid-ring and Winry gave a muffled response I couldn't entirely make out. When I came into the room, she was holding the phone to her face with a surprised expression.

"Ed? It's pretty unusual for you to call."

I felt my stomach drop to my feet.

"Edward... Elric?" I squeaked. Winry either didn't notice or didn't care about my reaction, her attention on the phone. 

It couldn't actually be Edward Elric, though. Because there was no way I could actually be in the FMA world, right? That sort of thing was impossible. And besides, why me, of all people? I was just a pretty average, uninteresting teenage girl. Honestly, as much as I loved FMA, the real Edward Elric would probably never even look twice at me. 

The _real_ Edward Elric? I mentally kicked myself. There was no such thing. There had to be a reasonable explanation for all of this. Even the dog with working automail. 

"Oh, were you the one who called earlier?" Winry said, snapping me out of my thoughts. 

Oh no, this was the same guy who had called earlier? And Winry was talking English to him and understanding him just fine. I wanted to sink into the floor. And if this actually was Edward Elric--impossible, of course, but if he was--well, then I just kind of wanted to die of embarrassment. I had no idea why he had sounded like he was talking gibberish to me and sounded perfectly normal to Winry. Had it been a connection with the phone?

"Nonsense?" Winry sandwiched the phone against her shoulder and glanced back at me. "So you didn't understand her either?"

Apparently he remembered me as talking "nonsense," from what I could guess. My fingers itched for the phone. I wanted to hear the guy talk again, wanted to hear if he honestly sounded like Edward Elric and I somehow hadn't noticed before. I wanted to hear if the phone was suddenly fixed and he was actually talking in a way I could understand. Winry was talking to him without any problems, and it seemed like he was understanding her English fine. I wanted to know why he could understand Winry but hadn't understood me before. It had to be something to do with the phone. 

"Something like that," Winry said with a shrug, turning back to the phone, as if she could actually see the conversation instead of just hearing it. I couldn't tell if she honestly wanted me there or not, but I was too curious to leave, and also kind of worried that she would need me for something. 

"Anyway," Winry said with a smile, "What would be important enough to make the mighty state alchemist call us country bumpkins?" 

State Alchemist. She said state alchemist. And it didn't seem... I don't know, like it didn't belong in the conversation. It didn't sound like two friends from the same fandom making some kind of inside joke. It sounded... genuine. I felt kind of dizzy. This was all impossible. There was no way. There had to be some kind of explanation. 

"Service call?"

I felt my eyes widen. Was this actually the part in the FMA story I could remember, or was it just a conversation that happened to be similar? If it was what I could remember, then Ed was calling Winry because his arm had suddenly gone limp while he was fighting Slicer at lab 5. But that almost seemed even more ridiculous than me showing up in the FMA world. I had just happened to show up right in the middle of the story, at a time when Ed would just be conveniently calling Winry?

Winry gasped and then groaned, reaching around on the desk to pick up a screw, holding it up to the light. I couldn't read the label from where I was standing, but I was pretty sure it would say A-08. Maybe there would be another coincidentally similar conversation with Ed calling for her to come do service for him, but Winry would never forget a screw like that again, I was positive. 

At that point, I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I was surprised by Winry suddenly seeming to notice I was still there. 

"Could you give me a minute? I'll be out in a little bit."

I kind of wanted to pout over being so clearly dismissed. I still wanted to know what was going on, if it was honestly Ed on the other end of the phone and if I still didn't understand what he was saying. It didn't even feel like I needed to leave in the first place. I had already seen this conversation play out before in a story, so it felt weirdly... public. But this time I was actually physically there for the conversation. If I was actually in Ed's world now, I was no longer the invisible fly viewer on the wall.

"Oh, nothing, I was just talking to Rebecca," I could hear Winry say as I left the room with a pout and headed back to the living room. "Did you do anything to it before it stopped working?"

Even though I couldn't hear any more of the conversation after that point, it was definitely the same conversation that was in FMA. Which meant I was not only in the FMA world, but I was also right in the middle of the story, and right before things started getting even more intense. It was impossibility stacked on top of impossibility. 

And then it suddenly clicked for me why something so impossible could be happening. I had to be in some sort of dream, and my brain was just picking up a memorable part of the FMA story it could remember. Maybe when I'd fallen off my bike, I'd gotten into some kind of coma or something. Like Dorothy and Oz. 

Everything suddenly felt much brighter for me. I was just in a dream, or a coma or whatever it was. And it happened to be a dream in the FMA world. I could just spend time enjoying FMA, and then when I had learned whatever lesson I'd come there to learn, I'd go back home. But in the meantime, I could just enjoy the time I'd been granted in this world. I probably wouldn't even have any time pass when I woke up in my own world again. Well, maybe some time would pass, but I could probably live years in this world and only have a couple days pass in my world. 

Okay, I had no way of actually knowing how any of this worked, but that was how these sorts of situations always worked in stories. It had to be at least a little similar to all the stories. I was guessing I probably couldn't really die in this world, because brains always woke up from a dream whenever you got close to dying. Still, I didn't particularly want to wake up from this dream, so it wasn't like I was going to suddenly be reckless.

I almost wanted to skip to the living room I was so giddy, but unfortunately, I was still stuck on those darn crutches. I fact, I was starting to feel the beginning tingles of pain in my leg, so it was probably time to put some more ointment on to make sure I wouldn't have the same awful pain I'd had the day before. I wobbled back to my room on my crutches so I would be able to actually put the ointment on my leg.

Winry had absolutely been right about needing more ointment. I had only used it a couple of times so far, and I was already scraping the bottom of the tin. I wondered if people usually need enough to cover an entire leg like I was doing. If Winry really was Winry and putting automail on people, then maybe. Then again, hadn't there been something said in the series about not being allowed painkillers while going through the surgery? But surely people were allowed painkillers after the surgery was over. I had only just finished applying the ointment and was leaning back to rest when there was a knock at the door. 

"Come in," I said, and Winry peeked her head in. 

"So," she said, coming in and twisting her fingers together. "It looks like I'm going to have to go into Central on a service call," she said, and I nodded. "So I was wondering if... Do you remember where your home is? Because we could easily get you a ride or train tickets if you wanted to go home?"

"Oh. Um..." I hesitated. I couldn't very well tell her I was from another world. I mean, what if that suddenly ruined the illusion to my brain and I woke up? I wasn't ready to wake up yet, not when I hadn't even met Ed yet. Could I say my home was in Central, and see if she would take me along? Except if Winry was going to the same city as me she'd probably want to drop me off at this nonexistent home. I suddenly realized that in this world, I didn't actually have any kind of a home or parents. I was completely on my own, even more so than Ed and Al. 

"I... I think I'm an orphan," I said, my words getting caught a little as I choked on a lump in my throat. I wasn't trying to play it up for Winry, though it obviously looked pathetic enough to suddenly get a pitying look. 

Deep down, I was sure that my parents were still alive somewhere. It was just somewhere I couldn't get to. I was positive that my parents were fine, but it still bothered me for whatever reason that they weren't there. I felt like the baby who couldn't even handle being dropped off at preschool. But my parents had always been there whenever I had gone through _anything_. I didn't even really know how to just exist on my own, even if it was a dream world.

"Oh, Rebecca," Winry said softly, and came over to sit on the bed next to me. She reached out and patted my shoulder, and I found myself wishing for the way my mom had always rubbed circles on my back. 

It was just a dream. Everything was fine. My parents were fine. There was no reason for me to be upset. Snap out of it, Rebecca!

"I don't want to be alone," I said softly, and suddenly the tears I had been fighting back were overflowing and sliding down my cheeks. "I wish I could just go with you."There was a moment of silence, or, well, as silent as you could get through my hiccups and sniffles. I was crying so much that I couldn't even see what Winry was doing. 

"Well," Winry finally said after a minute. "I don't see why not."

"What?" I sniffled and rubbed at my eyes in an attempt to clear away some of the tears. They were immediately replaced though and I still ended up unable to see. 

"Sure!" Winry said, and the hand she had on my shoulder curled so she was holding my arm. "Ed said he would call the station and leave directions with them to charge his account for the train ticket, so I wouldn't even have to pay for the extra fare. And it would be great to have someone to help me carry things and talk on the train! But you have to be ready to leave right away because we have to go tonight. Can you do that?"

"Um, I think so," I said, wiping at my tears with the heel of my hand. "Did you put my bag somewhere?"

"Your bag?"

"Yeah, I had this orange sort of... backpack thing," I said, gesturing over my shoulders. It was really one of those bags that was basically a giant drawstring dice bag, only the strings became straps for your arms. Except I didn't know what those kinds of bags were called, let alone if they even existed in this world. "I was wearing it when I... Got lost." 

"Oh," Winry said with a frown. "You weren't wearing a backpack when I found you. Do you think maybe it got burned like your clothes?"

I felt my hope evaporate. I hadn't thought about it being burned like Winry had said my clothes had been burned. I couldn't remember any sort of fire, but if my clothes hadn't survived, then my bag probably hadn't either. I was stuck in another world and I didn't even own my own pair of underwear. I didn't even have anything to remind me of home. 

"If you want," Winry said, seeming to notice my expression, "I could take you by where I found you. It's on the way to the train station. Maybe you'll actually find it because you'll know what you're looking for compared to me."

I could already picture just finding an orange bag poking out from a bush or half covered by dirt, and I felt my spirits rise. Winry had probably just overlooked it. It was probably around. "Yeah, maybe." I sighed and looked down at myself. "I guess I don't have to pack anything, then."

"Alright, well, I just need to grab some tools and then we can head out," Winry said with a smile. I nodded and followed her out of the room. It felt weird to be going somewhere without anything. Usually, no matter where I went, I always had some sort of backpack or something. Mostly because I always wanted to have a pencil and paper around no matter what so I could work on fanfiction whenever the mood struck me. 

I suddenly remembered the fanfiction I had been working on before Winry and Pinako and felt all the blood rush to my face. If anyone saw that here in this world it would suddenly be so weird! So as Winry bustled into her workroom, I hurried back to the dining room where I had left my stack of papers. Thankfully they still seemed completely untouched, so I snatched the papers off the table and curled them in a tube between my hands as I paced back and forth in the living room. Den apparently thought I was doing something interesting, and she started following me as I paced until I eventually gave in and stopped pacing to pet her. 

After a few minutes, Winry came stomping down the stairs with a metal toolbox slung over her shoulder and a small baby blue backpack clutched in her free hand. "Okay, I'm all set!" she called out. "Granny, I have to get going if we're going to catch the train!"

Pinako came out of the kitchen with a cloth bundle in her hands as she said something to Winry I couldn't understand. I was still baffled why I couldn't seem to understand her. Would I still have the same problem with Ed when we actually got to Central? I sure hoped not. I hoped it was just a weird glitch of my brain being in a dream that would wear off after a little bit.

"Rebecca's actually going to come along," Winry said as she took the cloth bundle and put it in the blue backpack. "I could use the extra help, and she still needs a little help with her physical therapy."

Pinako shot a look at me for a moment before turning back to Winry and saying something else I couldn't understand. I had no idea if there was some sort of message I was supposed to get from that look, but I had no idea what she was getting at. 

"It's fine, Granny," Winry said with a little laugh before holding the blue backpack out to me. "Here, I thought you could carry this even with the crutches." 

I nodded and took the backpack from her, shoving my curled papers into it before slinging it over my back.

"Okay," Winry said with a nod and glance around the room. "Then I should be back in a few days. I'll try to call when I'm on my way home." Pinako said something in response to that that sounded dismissive, but Winry waved it off before focusing her attention on Den, leaning down low enough to get her face licked. "And you'll be a good girl while I'm gone, won't you?"

And with one last round of hugs between Winry and Pinako, we were suddenly out and heading for the train station. I at least got a wave from Pinako, so maybe she didn't entirely hate me? It was so hard to tell when I had no idea what she was saying. But then again, she could have just been waving at Winry and not me. 

Winry was setting a fairly brisk pace compared to what I had been doing with crutches until then, but I managed to keep up with her somehow. I was pretty sure that part of what was slowing me down was the fact that I was actually suddenly in Resembool in actual 3D and not just as a drawing on a screen. It wasn't all that exciting, but it was at least beautiful. It was like walking through an endless sea of grass with just the worn dirt path and stone walls to our sides. The path was actually so worn down by carts that had used it that it had these two ruts on either side, and I kept slightly slipping with where I was placing my crutches. 

We had just walked past the crumbling edge of the wall when Winry was pointing to a field of flowers to our left. 

"This is where I found you," she said, pausing and letting me catch up to look where she was looking. There was a chunk of flowers missing and all that was left was a burned circle of flowers. I could suddenly see why Winry had suspected there had been some kind of fire. The flowers were clearly burned. Though there was no clear beginning or end to the burn path, just that weird circle in the middle of the flowers. I decided not to point out how weird it was to Winry. I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself than absolutely necessary. I hobbled into the center of the circle, as if understanding this place where I had come from would somehow make me understand how I had gotten there in the first place. Something about the burned circle made me uneasy. 

"I came here to get some poppies," Winry said as she walked into the middle of the circle with me. "We've got a few minutes to look if you think your bag might be here."

We spent the next couple minutes poking around the flowers, seeing if we could spot any sign of an orange nylon backpack, but there was nothing. if I was being honest, my hopes had dropped as soon as I had seen the burned circle. I hadn't pictured that much damage having been done when I arrived, but I was realizing why Winry thought I'd been in a fire and had pitied me so much when I said I was an orphan. Finding someone like this would be terrifying. 

I told Winry that it was okay and that I didn't think we would find anything there. She gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and then moved on with that brisk pace of hers. I was just hobbling to catch up with her when one of my crutches slipped on a piece of ash just like it had been doing with the ruts in the road. 

Only when I looked down to see what I had slipped on, I was greeted by the smudged face of a drawing of Ed. I gasped and bent down to the ashes, brushing away the black to uncover this one tiny piece from my past. There was no sign of the rest of the contents of my bag, but there was the first FMA manga there under the ashes. It was burned around the edges and a little ruffled, but it was still holding together. I wasn't sure how it had managed to stay protected through everything, but I could have cried with relief. Here was the one thing that proved I wasn't crazy, that I really did remember this world being from a story. 

I thanked whatever had actually given me such a grace and stuffed the book in the blue backpack before slinging it back over my shoulder and hurrying to catch up with Winry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was originally going to be two chapters, but then I realized nothing much really happened in chapter three and it just left on a cliffhanger of Ed calling, so... I ended up just deciding to smush the two chapters together. Which means I now have to write faster if I want to catch up and keep updating this regularly. I hope it was worth it!


	4. Heroes Always Have Their Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: This chapter contains an extremely ableist and misogynist character who attempts to say the R-word. I didn't let him actually get the whole word out, because we don't do that here. I don't care how much of a bigot a character in one of my stories might be. I refuse to have the full R-word in one of my stories. It's beyond unacceptable. I just won't do it, even if it's said by an absolute flaming trash heap of a person. 
> 
> This chapter also deals with some of the heavier aspects of these topics, like trying to recover after someone screams horrible things at you. I hope I've managed to write it in a way that makes the resolution satisfying but also not unrealistic. The views this character expresses in this chapter are not supported by the characters, and not by myself either. 

Arriving at the train station was weird. First, the trains were old. Like, really old steam engines. I had only ever seen a train like that in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, but of course that one wasn't still running. 

And the second weird thing was that it was kind of just... a train station in the middle of nowhere. I supposed that I should have expected that from what I knew about Resembool, but it still took me by surprise. Even in my own tiny hometown, the train station was still in the center of the town. It was a tiny town and there wasn't much to show for "the center of town," but at least there were other buildings. This was just a giant train station surrounded by fields. 

"Why's the train station so big?" I asked Winry as we walked up to the building. "Wouldn't you only need a small station for a small town like this?" After all, the train in my own hometown had basically been a glorified shed, with only enough space for a ticket window and a bench. This was a whole entire building about the size of a house. I just couldn't imagine people milling around enough for the building to ever be busy. 

"Normally," Winry said with a smile over her shoulder. "But the guy who had it built was sure that Resembool was going to have its population explode someday, so he built this. That never happened, so it mostly just gets used by farmers bringing equipment and livestock and such."

When we got to the building and up to the counter to get our tickets, the woman selling tickets was speaking that same language I didn't understand, so I had to apparently rely entirely on Winry to know what was going on. Not that I would have known much of what to do, anyway. I had only ever ridden a train with my family before. I'd never had to buy my own tickets before, let alone trying to figure out how it was supposed to work when someone had called ahead to cover the cost. 

We were lucky in the fact that the train would be coming soon, which was apparently important since they didn't come through Resembool every day. Well, I say lucky, but Winry had a copy of the train schedule at her house, so she had known the train would be coming. We still had a couple hours until the train actually came, though. I was used to trains that came every hour, every day, so the thought of waiting that long for a train sounded like torture to me. According to Winry, that was just the way catching trains here worked. Despite the schedule, sometimes they would show up an hour or two early, and sometimes they would show up late. And everyone just put up with that, for whatever reason. And then, even once we actually got on the train, we wouldn't even be arriving at Central until morning. 

After half an hour, I was gritting my teeth with frustration. I hadn't brought a book or anything to distract me, and the boredom was wearing on my nerves. Winry was fiddling with things in her toolbox, apparently making sure everything was in order for when she would actually get to work on Ed's automail. Normally I would work on fanfiction, but something about that felt weird when I was still in the FMA world. Plus my ointment was starting to wear off, and I was starting to feel the soreness in my leg and arm that I had been avoiding until then.

"You know," Winry said, looking over at me as I readjusted for what felt like the millionth time. "If you're bored, you could always work on some physical therapy while we wait."

At that point, I was willing to do just about anything. I was used to always running around without any relief, always having something else to do, even it it was just reading. Having nothing to do was driving me nuts. "How do I do that?"

Winry smiled and closed her toolbox before moving so she was crouching in front of me. She cradled my ankle with her hands and slowly lifted until my leg was hovering about a foot over the ground. I was grinding my fingers into the wood of the bench, my leg in absolute agony. It was like the horrible pins and needles feeling I got whenever my foot fell asleep, only this wasn't fading away as my foot woke up. My leg was already straining with the effort. 

"This helps your leg get stronger at holding itself up," Winry said, giving me a small smile that I was pretty sure was pity. "You want to hold it up like this for about ten seconds, then rest, then do it again."

"Okay," I said through gritted teeth, already regretting agreeing to try this. Thankfully, Winry was already lowering my foot back to the ground. 

"After you've done that a few times, you want to switch to a different exercise. You can turn your ankle like this," she said, suddenly turning my foot in a wide circle. I whimpered in surprise. "And you should also trying standing up and sitting down to help your knee get stronger. Just don't overwork yourself. Trying to recover too quickly will actually hurt you and make your recovery take longer, so be patient with yourself." 

It sounded like something she had said a million times, and I found myself wondering if it had been Ed she had learned to say it to. 

Winry settled back into her seat on the bench, but didn't reopen her toolbox as I started on her exercises. She started chatting casually about physical therapy and automail and how my case was different in comparison which was apparently _fascinating_ to her, but I found I had a hard time focusing when it felt like my leg was on fire. Here I had been hoping for something that would distract me, but it felt like time slowed to even more of a crawl as I held my leg in the air, counting the seconds until I could stop. This was only ten seconds, how on earth was I going to get through another hour and a half? It felt like I was counting down every single minute until I could finally get on the train and be done with all of this. What kind of dream gave you pain like this and demanded you do physical therapy, anyway?

"You're doing really well," Winry said with a smile when I put my foot down again with a groan. My first thought was to reply that I wasn't doing as well as Ed, that he would probably be pushing himself through the pain, that it probably wasn't even as bad as whatever he had been through because I didn't even have automail. But I wasn't supposed to know Ed or what he had been through, so I bit my lip even as I opened my mouth to say something. I needed to not say things like that. Still, I couldn't help but feel like a weakling, no matter what Winry said. 

"I just wish the train would hurry up and get here," I said with a sigh as I leaned back against the bench. I wasn't sure how long I could take these exercises, and I was desperate for something else to do, like looking out a train window or something. 

Thankfully, the train did actually end up arriving a whole hour early, so I didn't end up having to wait much longer. We were allowed to get on the train and get comfortable, but apparently, we were still stuck waiting for a while because the train wasn't going to actually leave until it was scheduled to leave. I tried to resist the urge to groan. Here I was having this amazing dream in the FMA world and it felt like all I could do was sit around and wait. What a ridiculous dream or coma or whatever it was my brain was doing. Why couldn't I just instantly teleport to Central or something?

Still, it was probably a good thing we had the extra time to board the train and get settled. Just getting on the train meant climbing a few steps, something that was really hard for me with my crutches. The room I'd been in at the Rockbell house had been on the ground floor so I hadn't needed to try and figure out stairs, which I was suddenly realizing had been a blessing. And then it suddenly hit me that it probably hadn't been a coincidence. I had probably been put in a room that they normally used for people recovering from automail surgery. Of course they wouldn't want those poor people to have to try and manage stairs when they were relearning how to walk. Apparently, an outhouse was fine. I swore I could remember normal toilets being a part of the FMA series, so why the heck did Winry have that stupid outhouse, anyway?

"So the last stop with this train is Central" Winry said as she stashed her bag of tools on the rack above the seats. "So it's totally fine if you want to sleep. We won't miss our stop or anything. We should be arriving at Central some time tomorrow morning." 

I squeaked. "It'll take that long?" It was still daylight outside, even if it wouldn't be for too much longer. I was used to it only taking an hour or so to catch the train into Chicago. Was Central really that far away from Resembool? Winry laughed slightly and shook her head. 

"I know, it's ridiculously fast. You know what's really interesting? I've heard there's new technology being worked on that will make trains go even _faster_. Can you imagine? You could be somewhere across the country in the time it takes to walk into town." 

I resisted the urge to groan and instead settled for smiling and nodding at Winry. I mentally kicked my own brain for deciding to be accurate to the time with this FMA dream. I hadn't even paid attention in history class and somehow my brain knew better than me what technology would be normal in Ed's time. And I had a hunch I was just going to keep being frustrated with how little technology there was here. 

Just after we had gotten settled, another person climbed aboard the train. He was dressed in a really sharp suit and looked like he was somewhere around the same age as Roy- Young enough to still be considered young, but old enough that he was definitely an adult compared to me. He didn't look like the sort of guy you would normally see in Resembool, but then again, that was probably why he was getting on the train headed towards the city.

As he walked past us, I heard him mutter something under his breath before making a weird hacking sound. And then there was something wet landing on my cheek. I reached up to rub it off with a confused frown. What the heck? Had I just been spit on? Before I had the chance to really think about it, though, Winry was on her feet, a furious expression flashing through her eyes. 

"Hey, what the hell is your problem?" she snapped at the guy, jabbing a finger against his chest. 

The guy said something angry in return, and though I had no idea what exactly he was saying, he gestured at me while he said it. I sank down in my seat. What exactly had I done to make this guy so upset, anyway? He seemed so angry, and I didn't feel like someone would be that upset for no reason. 

"It's okay, Winry," I mumbled, looking down at the floor. "Whatever he's mad about, just tell him I'm sorry or something."

"What?" Winry looked over at me, her eyes flashing. "No, Rebecca. I'm not going to apologize for you having scars and this random asshole deciding that was his business for some reason." 

The guy jumped in with more angry yelling and gesturing at me, though what for I had no idea. I wanted to just disappear. He was mad about my scars? So maybe it really was true that men weren't going to find me attractive because of these stupid scars. Winry yelled back at the guy about how none of this was his business, and I glanced around. I felt like we had some sort of neon sign pointing at us saying "Hey, pay attention to the weirdos over here who are causing a scene!" Thankfully, at least the only other person on the train was a conductor or something, though he was frowning and heading in our direction. Oh gosh, were we going to get kicked off the train because we were yelling? This was the only train that would be coming around for a couple days. Winry couldn't afford to just miss this train because of me. Ed needed her!

"Honestly, it's okay, Winry," I said, tugging at her sleeve with another glance at the conductor headed towards us. She gave me a sort of pitying look, her eyebrows creased. 

"No, Rebecca, it's really not okay." 

The conductor jumped in then, saying even more words I couldn't understand. The man responded with some very passionate nonsense of his own, waving his arms at me and then at Winry. The conductor was frowning, glancing over at me and then at Winry as the man gestured to each of us. Winry tried to jump in with some sort of protest, but the conductor held a hand up towards her and then gestured at the man to continue. I felt my heartbeat spike. Oh no, he was listening more to the man than us. We were definitely going to get kicked off. And Winry was saying it was okay now, but once she realized she had missed her train because of me, then she would suddenly be angry with me. Winry was the only friend I had in this world right now, if she was suddenly mad at me, I wouldn't have any way to survive. I wouldn't even be able to tell what anyone was saying. I felt like I could hardly breathe. I felt like I could cry at any minute, just like how I had nearly cried earlier when I thought Winry could possibly be playing a prank on me. Why was it I was suddenly on the brink of tears almost all the time? I didn't normally cry this much. I normally didn't cry much at all, really. But now it felt like just about everything made me feel like crying. 

I just felt so helpless. I couldn't even tell what the man and the conductor were saying to each other, and now it seemed like the conductor was getting pretty passionate himself, though he was still keeping himself professional. 

"I wish I could just understand everyone," I said quietly. Despite all my effort to try and keep myself from crying, a tear still managed to fight its way past and slid down my cheek. I watched it drop from my chin to the floor, making the tiniest splash that no one other than me even noticed. 

"I don't see why I should have to share a train car with this _thing_ ," the man said with another wave towards me. I blinked in surprise. My brain had suddenly caught up and was translating him? Was it just because I had gotten distraught enough for my brain to realize it needed to make sure I understood everyone and not just Winry? "Creatures like it are only being kept alive out of pity as it is. It's ugly as sin and can't even speak, so clearly it's reta-"

"That's completely unnecessary," Winry snapped, cutting the man off. Her face was a deep red, her arms crossed over her chest as she glared daggers at the man. The conductor sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Sir, as I said, you can either sit in another car or you can leave," the conductor said with a sigh. "But I haven't seen these two ladies cause any trouble, so I have no reason to kick them off the train." 

The guy grumbled for a minute despite the fact that he had already been heading to a different car before Winry had stood up. But thankfully he did eventually just leave to another car, leaving us with the conductor who apologized several times. I mostly wanted the entire ordeal to just end and for him to go away, but apparently my scared silence was enough to make both Winry and the conductor think I had been really bothered by the man, which led to more apologizing, which eventually led to him offering to cover the cost of our tickets. Which then led to him finding our tickets had actually been paid for by none other than _the_ Fullmetal Alchemist, which then led to him offering to upgrade us to first class for free. 

Winry somehow managed to take all of this in stride, thanking the man for stepping in and taking care of things. And I was more than happy to just let her handle the talking until the conductor was gone and we were comfortably settled in the nicest train car I had seen. 

"Wow, I don't think Ed even takes first class whenever he rides the train!" Winry said excitedly, leaning in towards me like we were sharing some big secret. I wanted so badly to enjoy it with her, since I couldn't even remember if I had been anywhere as fancy as that before in my life. Apparently, our tickets now came with free champagne. And it wasn't a problem that we were both still children. Were the laws about alcohol different here or something, or was that just part of the rich people treatment?

"It's really nice," I said, doing my best to give Winry a smile back, but I knew it was weak. She scrunched her eyebrows at me like she felt sorry for me. I was starting to get really tired of people looking at me like that. 

"I wish Ed had been here for that," Winry said with a sigh. "He probably would have punched that guy in the face." 

My smile grew just a little more genuine. "Nah, he probably would have kicked him in the face." 

"Probably!" Winry said with a laugh before reaching out and grabbing my hands, giving me a small squeeze. I stared down at her hands for a minute, biting my lip, and words burst out of me before I'd even had a chance to think about if I really wanted to say these words, if I wanted to fully acknowledge what had just happened.

"He called me an it." 

Winry's face fell. "You understood what he was saying?" 

"Not the first bit, but the second half... I guess my brain finally just clicked back into place or something," I said, giving her another weak smile. "Maybe it was the stress." 

"That can happen sometimes," Winry said, then paused, looked me over with those scrunched eyes. "Rebecca, I'm so sorry." 

"It's not your fault," I said with a shrug. Winry opened her mouth to say more, but before she could actually get a word out, she was interrupted by someone coming over with the fancy champagne drinks we had been promised. He was polite enough, wishing us a nice day and smiling, but I could feel his eyes lingering that extra second on the scars on my arm, and I felt myself reaching up to cover my arm with my other hand. 

"Here," Winry said once the champagne guy had left. She let go of my hands and shrugged out of her jacket. The same jacket I could remember seeing her wearing in the manga she was now holding out to me.

"Oh, I can't!" I said even as Winry pushed it into my hands. "What if you get cold?"

"It's fine, Rebecca," she said with a smile, letting go of the jacket and leaving me holding it. "I think you need it more than me right now." 

Part of me felt like I was supposed to keep protesting, but I also couldn't help but want the jacket at the same time. After having someone say my scars were that ugly, I couldn't help but feel like I needed to hide them away just so I could avoid someone else getting that angry. And besides, it wasn't like I had any clothing anyway. Everything I was wearing already was Winry's clothes, and it wasn't like there was any difference with this jacket compared to the other clothes I was already wearing. I was just having a weird hangup over it because this felt like "classic Winry" clothes, clothes I could recognize, like I wasn't allowed to wear them for some silly reason. I sighed and pulled the jacket on. 

"For the record," Winry said softly. "I don't think you should have to hide. I think you're beautiful. But I don't blame you for wanting to hide either." 

"Thanks," I said with a weak chuckle. Of course she said something like that, it was, like, the girl code or something that if another girl thinks she's ugly, everyone has to rush in and say no, no, of course you're pretty. But I couldn't stop my head from spinning. What if I showed up and met Ed for the first time and he thought my scar was ugly too? Sure, he wouldn't be mean like that other guy had been, but I couldn't even bear the thought of Ed quietly thinking I was ugly. I couldn't help but look around at everyone now, wondering if they were also thinking of me as an "it" who didn't deserve to live. That guy had gotten under my skin more than I ever wanted to admit, but I couldn't say that to Winry and have her give me more of those pitying eyes. 

Winry didn't seem as weirded out by the free champagne as I felt, so I assumed it had to be at least a little bit of a culture thing. She sipped at her glass while staring out the window, and then she managed to doze off just as the sky was starting to darken. 

I knew I probably needed to find a way to sleep too, considering I knew we would be riding all night and this would really be my only chance to get some sleep. But my mind was still racing too much, trying to think about the weird scar and what it would mean for me. I had never seen a scar like mine before in my life, and I still had no idea how I had gotten it. And if this was theoretically a dream, then I wasn't sure why exactly my brain wouldn't just picture me the same way I always looked. 

Then again, there had been that weird memory I'd had of the gate. Maybe my brain just thought that if I was in this world, then I must have passed through the gate, and if I had passed through the Gate, then that meant a toll. I nodded to myself with a frown. The scar must just be my toll. And I was getting charged a toll because... Because my brain just figured that was what happened. It was just my brain trying to fill in the holes or something. It certainly wasn't because I had actually been brought to this world.

I kept telling myself that as I stared out the dark window, until eventually the motion of dark trees rushing past lulled me into a light sleep where I was haunted by loud voices, a wet spot on my face, and the image of Ed making a grossed out face as he looked at me. The worst part was, I hadn't even met Ed yet, so I had no idea what he looked like, and I was stuck with my brain giving me the 2D anime image of his face instead. 

Which somehow seemed even more painful, because that was the same Ed I had pictured in my brain for so long as the person to keep me strong, the person who would be kind when life sucked, the person who wasn't real and therefore could never reject me. And now I was in a reality where even my own private fantasies were rejecting me. 


End file.
